Reflecting recently after a personal diagnosis that has created pause in my life again, I realized a gift that was offered working and living through the throws of the COVID 19 pandemic. This gift is resilience. As I have only begun to talk with others about my lived experience of the pandemic, I am having honest conversations and reflections of the meaning and value gained. Resilience is a hot button word and topic, especially among healthcare workers and leaders. For me, it is becoming an internal acknowledgment and understanding. It’s offered me coping and freedom in what could presently bring me despair and darkness. The beginning of understanding the resilience gained came through the health crisis of my daughter and now to my own health and wellness.
I have started to unpack the trauma, exhaustion, emotional, mental and physical pain that working through the height of COVID allotted me. With extremely minimal staffing and working to cover my normal Monday-Friday 8-5p, picking up a 24 hour shift every week and working every other weekend, I was beyond physically tired. Offering of myself in my clinical role contributed to spiritual exhaustion, along with questioning and learning a new way of ministering from the outside while trying to be connected through media and technology on the inside. Trusting that the Divine was always present within me and the one I was serving. I, along with my colleagues, acquired new skill sets and had to learn new ways of being and doing that in some ways went against everything we knew to be true within the hospital chaplaincy context. I’ve continued to live with this overwhelming feeling that I made it. I made it through alive, well, and intact.
I say this knowing that at times I really questioned whether I would. I thought at times I was going to lose my mind, break down emotionally and physically, and at times began writing my resignation. I am now only able to breathe and know that I can trust that others are capable and willing to take the load as it is distributed and we are back to having competent chaplain residents and interns to help the three of us staff chaplains that remain. I am grateful for this breath because now it is time to take care of myself and work really hard to know it’s not selfish. I know in my education and mind taking care of self is not selfish, but knowing it throughout my being is where the integration is beginning. At 42, it is time to integrate ALL that I have read, taught, know and continue to learn about rest and renewal. I readily and whole heartedly engage and treat others the way I want to be treated, it’s now time to treat myself the way I treat others.
I ask others how are they their own best friend? It is now time to turn the question inward and I’m navigating what that question means and how to apply it within myself. I do know my walks with Lola are a way I am loving myself, and in turn loving my dog. They have become sacred and I protect them. The problem is I know how to do, I don’t know how to be (no matter how many times I can say I do). As I engage this new chapter in my life and well-being, I have no choice but to pause, reflect, appreciate that I am strong, coping well, and allow myself to have and name the bad days and my true feelings. Most days I’m ready and open to see what this new chapter and season of my life has to teach me. On the days I’m not, I am assured this too shall pass and I have the strength and resilience within myself to engage it. For that, I am grateful.
The Journey Home 